2009 Album Review #5: Doves - Kingdom of Rust

What a great band the Doves are. The way I always explain their music is it sounds like music from long ago, but from a different planet. So, what can I say about the Doves 4th studio album? It's good. It's true, the first two Doves albums are their best, but the only thing that is lacking in the later two albums is that they just don't have a "whole" album feel to them. The songs are just as good as previous efforts, but there is a flow to the first two albums that just makes them bigger than their individual parts. "Kingdom of Rust" is a slight improvement from the third release, but not by leaps and bounds. There are some great highlights here, including the title track which is reminiscent of "There Goes the Fear" (possibly the band's most popular song); There's the driving, funky "Compulsion", which is a fantastic song and may be the best on the album; there is the ever-building grand finale song "Lifelines", which is great if you're feeling kind of down, or need that extra motivational boost or whatever; There's "Spellbound" which has a nice 3/4 thing going on. That is just to name a few. The songs are there, but much like U2's latest effort, I'm not so sure the "vision" is; luckily, for the Doves, this doesn't hurt them too much and still keeps in the spirit of their experimental space-rock style. A solid effort that is just out of reach of being amongst their best.